How to Use wishful in a Sentence

wishful

adjective
  • No lines for me and lots of people with wishful looks on their faces.
    — Gabrielle Porcaro, Travel + Leisure, 2 Oct. 2023
  • But even half a million more acre-feet of water seems wishful.
    — Los Angeles Times, 20 Feb. 2023
  • But that may be little more than wishful thinking on Fox's part.
    — Rich Campbell, chicagotribune.com, 29 Aug. 2017
  • So if everything feels like some kind of wishful-thinking fairy tale, think again.
    — Peter Debruge, Variety, 30 Aug. 2021
  • But that's probably as wishful as asking young summer camp kids to get back to the bus on time.
    — Frank Witsil, Detroit Free Press, 2 May 2024
  • Time management might seem like a wishful afterthought when so many things get thrown your way.
    — Yec, Forbes, 28 Jan. 2022
  • All hail the new monarch of the wishful thinkers, her majesty Kelly Clarkson!
    — Hannah Dailey, Billboard, 4 May 2022
  • So is the climax, which goes whole hog with wishful dramatic thinking.
    — Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 19 July 2019
  • This is wishful fantasy, as many of the film's skeptics have noted.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 7 Aug. 2017
  • What are the most unlikely outcomes from this array of wishful events?
    — Quentin Corpuel, Kansas City Star, 21 Nov. 2025
  • In fact, more wishful trainers dot your journey than in previous games.
    — Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 16 Nov. 2018
  • This adds a new dimension to the wishful-thinking phase of our current crisis.
    — Gerard Baker, WSJ, 13 June 2022
  • Ten months in, his parents’ very cautious optimism seems wishful.
    — Sheelah Kolhatkar, The New Yorker, 25 Sep. 2023
  • Much of that was sparked by the pandemic, which upended the housing market and caused a wave of wishful scrolling.
    — Michael Kolomatsky, New York Times, 13 Apr. 2023
  • Trumpism may never have had a chance to begin with, but to use this election as the proof seems like wishful argument.
    — T.a. Frank, The Hive, 13 Dec. 2017
  • In fact, these testers were so excited about this chair that there were no mentions of improvements or wishful features.
    — Alyssa Brascia, Peoplemag, 18 Sep. 2022
  • Her music gets her there too; the song ends on a wishful note — with banger percussion — about togetherness.
    — New York Times, 24 July 2022
  • Instead of the wishful-thinking climactic chorus at the end, Leah wakes from her dream.
    — Los Angeles Times, 1 Mar. 2022
  • People spend years fighting to maintain a wishful line in the sand, yet a few extra feet of water here or there is hardly a shrug for the ocean.
    — Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times, 22 Aug. 2023
  • Zone coverage seems more wishful than actual.
    — Pete Sampson, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Some of your plans could prove a bit wishful and unworkable, so reach out to friends and co-workers for their realistic input.
    — Tribune Content Agency, oregonlive.com, 1 July 2019
  • This journey may seem daunting at first, but missing out on valuable opportunities is not a wishful thing to do.
    — Lara Sokolova, Forbes, 12 July 2022
  • The pandemic, of course, is where Trump’s willful and wishful ignorance turned the most deadly.
    — Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 5 Dec. 2023
  • Their thinking, however, is wishful.
    — Philip H. Gordon, Foreign Affairs, 16 Dec. 2025
  • Some cats do, in fact, show little interest in birds, but the other rationales are more wishful than evidence-based.
    — Jonathan Franzen, The New Yorker, 25 Dec. 2023
  • There is something deeply wishful about hosting a summit to bolster democracy around the world when our own is, at best, floundering.
    — Sue Halpern, The New Yorker, 30 Nov. 2021
  • The facts of this case stand in stark contrast to the government’s wishful and illusory arguments.
    — Jerry Dunleavy, Washington Examiner, 18 Feb. 2020
  • That may sound like the wishful thinking of a political newbie, but some longtime campaign strategists agree.
    — Melissa Healy, latimes.com, 15 June 2017
  • In their hands, America’s original sin is settled by the wishful effort to wash the nation clean.
    — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., TIME, 15 Apr. 2024
  • From the outside looking in, anyway, the idea was audacious and more wishful than realistic.
    — Vahe Gregorian, kansascity, 30 June 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wishful.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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